Jul

Wasps are just one of the numerous insects that millions of people around the world are afraid of. Actual phobias of these bugs are enough to completely destroy a day to the poor sufferer, and even as something as small as seeing one in the back yard is sufficient to fill them with dread.

Thankfully, there are lots of ways in which you are able to safely and naturally eliminate wasps, and you don’t always have to resort to killing them. Believe it or not, wasps really are good for the ecosystem.

Wasps help to keep the number of other insects down. Their principal food source tends be other bugs you would rather not have around anyhow, so without these yellow and black pests, we’d be overrun by gnats, midges, spiders, caterpillars, bees, flies, and even other wasps.

Wasps help ‘clean’ the decomposing corpses of dead insects all around us. Yellow jackets for instance, are nasty and horrifying creatures that many people would rather run a million miles away from but they feed the dead bugs to their young, essentially supplying us with one of nature’s most maid solutions.

If you have seen a wasp, the best advice you will hear is not to run off or flap your hands around. Normally, wasps will only bite you if they feel threatened and although your behavior might not seem overly threatening to you, you are a good deal larger than they are. To them you seem simply terrifying.

Preventing wasps is a fantastic idea for those who can but it’s not always possible, and if you find yourself with a debatable area in which the wasps seem to swarm, it could very well be that you have a nest on your hands. At this point you should certainly call in pest management. This isn’t a problem you are going to want to manage on your own.

Traps can be used if you’re trying to have a BBQ in the back garden and find yourself with a lot of those irritating insects flying around. Fill the bottom part of a bucket with a funnel about halfway with water until you do so and you have yourself a wasp trap. The wasps can fly at the funnel but can not get back out again, normally becoming exhausted and dying in the water beneath. In case you didn’t know, wasps don’t live water much.

You can substitute the water with a sweet beverage if you want to encourage the wasps away from wherever you are. Simply place the trap far enough away not to cause you a problem and allow the wasps to swarm. You may encourage them to come closer to you, but hopefully they will be attracted to the trap as opposed to you and your guests.

The issue with this method is that you’ll need to dispose of the wasps and / or the bottle afterwards. After a while, a growing number of wasps will develop and having enough of a layer, they will be able to clamber their way straight back out of the trap again. This isn’t something you will want – more wasps flying around you, and not effective trap to securely catch them in.

Of course with traps, you encourage the passing of those insects and as we’ve already said, wasps really are extremely great for the ecosystem. For a more effective alternative, and a more humanist one, you should probably consider using repellents as opposed to traps.

How to Repel Wasps

There are a number of quite clever ways in which you’ll be able to repel wasps rather than kill them. A fake wasps nest for instance, is enough to keep most of those flying stingers at bay, and can be purchase pretty cheap from most places also, particularly online.

Wasps are massively territorial therefore if they see a nest and believe a different colony lives there, they’re very likely to keep their distance. Who’d want to fight an entire colony of wasps alone? Not me that’s for sure!

Peppermint oil is another great tool you have at your disposal and several insects and other pests hate this stuff. I can not confirm whether or not this is accurate but I often have peppermint oil in the home being used in one way or another, and I have never had mice or rats and that I rarely get spiders.

According to other studies, wasps don’t really like hot stuff either so you can try making a chili-based spray and then turn up the temperature on these waspy beasts! A few cups of water mixed with some chopped chili peppers in the sun for a while prior to cooling and pouring into a spray bottle is the perfect thing to take with you once you go camping!

Oh and here’s a final tip – seemingly bees and wasps do not like cinnamon. Why don’t you sprinkle some around before you have the BBQ going?

If, after all your hard work and efforts, you still find yourself having an extremely perennial and quite annoying wasp problem, it might be time to admit defeat and call in the professionals. Pest control are there for a reason and they may have the one easy solution you’re lacking to finally eliminate these wasps for good!